Pixeljunk Nom Nom Galaxy

[Bjorn]

So we played a bit of this in Early Access, then decided to wait for the full release, which is now out!  Yah!

 

It's quite a bit of fun, though I strongly suspect that their original ambition for this game was much, much, much larger than what finally got released.  Each map is basically a mini-Terraria which you need to explore, build a base, make soup, crush your competitor and then move onto the next world.  It can get a bit repetitive if a particular planet is difficult to automate, but since we're playing only in co-op, we can take turns to alleviate that if either of us gets bored with manual management of the factory and farms.  I'm hoping the later worlds get bigger and have more of an opportunity for long form sandbox play.  I'd love to get a massive, hundred room automated factory going, but through the first two-thirds of the worlds, none of them seem big or diverse enough to support that yet. 

 

I also hope they aren't done building this, that they've got some further plans.  At one point there were (or at least plans for) research trees, weather biomes, more robots, and much more systems driven interactions on the planets, which were all scaled back.  I don't think they'll ever get back to those points, but I'd still rather see some more development on it. 

[Gwardinen]

I actually have this and was just waiting for coop to come in. I would be up for making soup with some Thumbs!

[Bjorn]

I think it would feel like quite the different game solo versus co-op, much like Terraria.  Solo seems like it would be frustrating to me, unless the speed that the enemy competitor works at is scaled down.  The AI hasn't felt like a real threat in co-op, more just like a slowly creeping time limit, but if it's the same speed alone, failure could probably be a real possibility. 

 

If you see us on playing sometime, drop us a line.  I think you can mix local/online in it.  The lady loves it bunches, and actually wants to play it more often and longer than I do (which is the rare role reversal). 

[Bjorn]

We finished this up a couple of nights ago.  Sadly it does not grow terribly much in complexity, though there are some neat gimmick levels later on that force you to do without some equipment you've been used to using.  The final level is by far the largest and best stocked, and would probably make an interseting level to build a massive base on, which is something we will probably go back and experiment with.  They've said that a sizeable patch is supposed to be coming within the next couple of weeks though, which will add in some minor cut content (most notably, half the tutorial was cut for some reason and is being restored) and a bunch of balance/bug fixes. 

 

Overall even with my disappointments in it, I enjoyed our time playing it and consider it well worth the purchase.  I was just hoping for something more like PJ Monsters, which is a game I continue to return to every so often years after playing it the first time. 

 

Edited to add: I've also been really impressed with the dev interactions with the Steam forums, which is always something I like to recognize.  I've asked a couple of clarification questions, and devs have responded to them.